


We'll Collect These Lonely Parts

by mytimehaspassed



Series: I'll Hit the Earth With You [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, F/M, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:57:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hospital, Lip brushes his fingers soft against Ian’s scars, and Ian pulls away fast because it still sends shivers up his arm through the network of damaged nerves that the doctors tell him will never heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Collect These Lonely Parts

**WE'LL COLLECT THESE LONELY PARTS**  
SHAMELESS (US)  
Ian/Mickey  
 **WARNINGS** : Mafia!AU; murder  
First: [I'll Hit the Earth With You](http://andletmestand.livejournal.com/23015.html)

  
In the hospital, Lip brushes his fingers soft against Ian’s scars, and Ian pulls away fast because it still sends shivers up his arm through the network of damaged nerves that the doctors tell him will never heal. Lip’s hand stills and he looks ashamed. Mickey’s poised, his eyes sweeping over them both, his breathing shallow, but Ian doesn’t look at him, doesn’t touch him.

The night before, Mickey had ran his tongue down Ian’s neck and Ian had opened his mouth and let out something like a gasp, and Mickey had slid his hand beneath the sheets and Ian had closed his eyes and neither one of them had said anything, and Ian had thought that nothing could make him feel more alive, but right now, with the feeling of Lip’s fingers still on his skin and Mickey coiled tight beside him, there’s something warm curling around and around inside of him and he doesn’t know what it is.

Lip tells Ian he’s sorry twenty-seven times in the space between the bed and the door, where he won’t move, won’t look at Ian or Mickey, and his mouth is pinched and bruised and his fingernails are jagged and bleeding and there’s a cut above his eye from where something had fallen and hit him during the fire. He’s sorry because if it wasn’t for him Ian wouldn’t be here, he’s sorry because he never should have refused a bodyguard, he’s sorry because for the past three weeks he’s gone to bed every night telling himself that he almost killed his brother and he can’t imagine anything in the world that could be worse than that.

Lip’s eyes shine in the light that punctures through the blinds and pools on the cold, tiled floor, and Ian wants to tell him all the things he hasn’t told Mickey yet, all the things he knows in his heart but can’t find the words for, all the things that nobody’s ever taught him how to say, but his throat aches with unshed tears.

He smiles and Lip smiles back, and it’s good enough for both of them.

***

Ian gets out after another week, with Frank on one side of him and Mickey on the other, both with strong hands wrapped around his arms to keep him balanced, and Frank is telling Ian that he should never be ashamed of his battle scars, the puzzle pieces of skin grafts on his body, the rattle of his lungs, that he should never think less of them, because Frank never got to where he is without shedding blood, most of it his own. Ian nods tightly and sends a look to Mickey, who makes a face that Frank doesn’t see, and Ian has to stop himself from laughing, and Mickey has to place five out-stretched fingers on his back, just below his ribs, to steady him.

Fiona cries when she sees him, gathering him tight enough to her that he loses his breath, and he feels the slick warmth of his eyes and he doesn’t let go, even when Debbie and Carl cling to him, even when Lip presses Liam close enough to kiss his face. There’s something here that Ian forgets he has sometimes, and pressing in, being swallowed by everyone’s grasp, Ian never wants to forget again.

***

Mickey touches him in small bursts of uncontrollable lust, and Ian basks in the glow of his hands and teeth and tongue and the way Mickey moves his mouth. Mickey doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ruin it with words neither of them can swallow, and Ian shows his gratitude with deft fingers and the wet, slow curl of lips on skin.

Mickey never talks about the fire, or the five minutes between Ian’s burning hand and the kiss on his forehand and the wailing screeches of sirens outside and the slow, momentous beats between the crushing wall of heat and the cold sweep of doctor’s gloves, and Mickey lost somewhere in between, crying, crying, crying. Mickey never asks what Ian thought when he woke up and saw him, and Ian never asks what Mickey thought when he saw him lying still on the floor with Ian’s father’s house falling all around them.

There’s symmetry here that neither one of them wants to break.

***

Frank finds the guy who was hired to torch the house and has Kev and Steve and Mickey kill him slow and without any of the respect that’s given to other criminals. Mickey comes to Ian that night with blood under his fingernails, his hands scrubbed pink and clean, his shoulders bruised from where Kev had to hold him back, from where Steve had to place his fingers and grip harder than anyone else because Mickey’s heart was throbbing high and tight in his throat and all he could hear was the dim thrum of blood in his ears and he just couldn’t stop himself from moving, from pressing the gun tight and tight and tighter to just above the guy’s ear so hard it makes a little ring, a little ring that turns into something blood red after he dies, his body crumpled on the floor, dirty and wet from where he pissed himself.

Frank thinks it’s funny in a justifiable way to burn his body with gasoline and cheap gas station lighters, so they do, and take the ashes out to sea on one of the boats down by the dock, gliding soft on the black water and sharing beers in silence.

Ian can still smell the gasoline on Mickey’s hands, even after washing them a thousand times, but he doesn’t ask what happened, doesn’t want to know. Sometimes Mickey forgets how young he is, how young he never got to be, growing up by Fiona’s hand with Frank’s money, with violence and love so intertwined that Mickey’s not sure Ian will ever figure out the difference.

Ian curls around him on the bed, his mouth close to Mickey’s mouth, and they don’t say anything, and they don’t breathe. Mickey doesn’t tell him how small the body had looked on the floor (small and curled in on itself and still, so fucking still, that Kev had to go outside and vomit when the sudden realization of what they had done hit him because he had never killed anyone before, not like Steve, not like Mickey, because as hard as he pretends to be, he’s never been as hard as this, the body that lays in silence and won’t ever be able to move again, small and small and small), how small Ian looks now, doesn’t tell him that the only way that this will stop is if Ian wants it to, because Mickey won’t ever be able to let go now.

Because Mickey won’t ever be able to stop until the day Ian kills him, too.

***

Frank finds out about them three weeks after Ian is released from the hospital.

Mickey only leaves because Steve tells him about the hit, gives him a nice two hour head start, his jaw lined with regret, the gun in his hand heavy and black, and Mickey’s wet eyes and the way he swallows and can’t breathe, can’t think.

Ian only comes with him because he’s not so sure he could have stayed.

***

Lip calls Ian six times in the space between Chicago and Jefferson City, with Mickey’s hands tight on the steering wheel of one of Frank’s stolen cars, white against the black leather interior, Ian’s phone sending shivers up his leg from where it vibrates in his pocket. Ian counts license plates and smokes a whole pack of cigarettes one right after the other, tapping the ash out of the open window, fiddling with the radio stations until he finds something that plays less talk and more music, something he actually knows.

Mickey stops for the night somewhere outside of a big city, some town that nobody’s ever heard of, parking the car in a hotel parking lot and pushing the backseat down flat. He touches Ian and Ian touches him back and once they start they can’t stop, Mickey biting Ian until he bleeds, this slow well of blood following every place Mickey touches, every bite and scratch and bruise, and Ian has to mouth Mickey’s neck to keep quiet, the space between his shoulder and his jaw, the space of white that leaves Ian hungry for something he can’t name.

Mickey calls out Ian’s name more than once, but it’s raw and hushed and wet against Ian’s chest, unintelligible and rough. Ian forgets not to cry, and Mickey licks his tears from his face, and neither of them talk about the life they left behind in Chicago, the friends, the family.

***

Mickey has enough money saved up to last them for a while, stashed away in something much bigger than a jelly jar, and Ian has cash but nothing else, because he figures the cards are either frozen or set up to trap them somewhere useless, and even Lip doesn’t ask him where he is when he leaves long, rambling messages on Ian’s phone, doesn’t even bother asking questions he’ll never get the answers to. Ian listens to them at night when Mickey is asleep, hears Lip’s pleads and platitudes and wants to tell him that he’s sorry, wants to tell him that he never meant for this to happen, even when a big part of him isn’t all that surprised, even when the rest just wants to forget about the five brothers and sisters in Chicago that have tried to keep him locked away and just couldn’t.

When Mickey says anything at all, he tells Ian that their life is not a fairy tale, and that this won’t have a happy ending for any of them. Ian knows this, knows this like he knows anything else (the taste of Mickey’s tongue and the soft touch of his hand on the small of Ian’s back and the way Mickey looks at him sometimes like he can’t believe he ever got to here, go to where he is, this place that’s lucky or maybe just entirely unlucky, something stupid and banal like that, the way Mickey looks at him and he knows and Ian knows and everything is shaped perfectly or maybe just a little too bright, and both of them come together and it’s something that they can’t explain but they like it, like it a lot, don’t ever want to let go, don’t ever want to leave this place they’ve created with parts of themselves they’d rather forget they have), but doesn’t care.

It will end when they want it to end, he tells Mickey, and presses his mouth to Mickey’s mouth.

***

Mickey knows a friend of a friend that lives somewhere near Denver, and they take the slow, scenic route through cornfields and flat, expansive lands and forests and mountains and dry creek beds and bumpy, gravel roads and buzzing highways and Mickey fucks Ian in every state the pass through, and Ian throws his phone away in a McDonald’s bathroom in Wichita, right before Mickey corners him and leans him over the sink and they slide together like jagged puzzle pieces and Mickey has to hold his hand against Ian’s mouth so the sleepy-eyed cashiers don’t hear him and they forget to lock the door and someone comes in with a mop just as they’re buttoning up their jeans and they don’t stop laughing until they’re clear into Colorado.

The man they meet is older than Mickey, more scarred, and he looks at them through the screen door with his hand hanging light by his hip, poised, and Mickey shows him the pink of his palms and mentions something that Ian can’t hear, and the man glances Ian over once, twice, and then lets them both into the house. Ian doesn’t ask what Mickey said to him, doesn’t want to know the names he’s been called behind his father’s back, doesn’t want to know where he fits in on the scheme of things. The man offers them coffee from a dirty cooktop stove, and Ian nurses the cup with two hands, his fingernails chipped and filthy against the ceramic.

Mickey doesn’t explain much, but he does slide over a generous amount of money across the table, and the man takes it and gives him two tickets for a charter plane that’s leaving in three days, two tickets in names other than their own, and Ian glances at his and it’s something stupid and generic like Walter and he wants to laugh, but he’s afraid if he opens his mouth, he’ll cry instead.

***

Mickey rents a hotel room with the rest of his cash and it’s been days since they’ve had a good shower and longer than that since they’ve slept in a bed instead of the backseat of the car, pushed together and clawing at each other’s skin, and Mickey orders room service and surprises Ian with a bottle of champagne, and they drink the whole thing and want more, kissing breathlessly between the sheets. Ian doesn’t let himself think about the plane, doesn’t let himself think about goodbyes or the promises he won’t be able to keep or the family he’ll never see again, doesn’t let himself think about anything other than the way Mickey touches him and the sounds he makes when Ian touches him back.

Mickey says, “I’m glad you came with me,” and it’s the first real comment since they left Chicago, and Ian curls into him and bites his lip, but it’s not hard.

Ian says, “Where else would I have gone?”

And Mickey swallows back the hitch in his throat, closing his eyes for one, two, three beats. “I’ll make it up to you,” he says, and Ian knows it’s more than that. “I’ll make sure this was worth it.”

“I know,” Ian says, and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, kisses him on his chin, kisses him on his jaw. “I know you will.”

Mickey sighs, and Ian feels something inside of him sharpen, and he moves his mouth to fit over Mickey’s mouth, soft, chaste. Mickey pulls back long enough to say, “I love you.”

And Ian grins and says it back.

***

They don’t even make it onto the plane, and Ian watches as Frank steps out of a dark-windowed sedan under the airport fluorescents, with Kev and Steve and several other men, and he’s immaculate and spectacularly drunk and Ian grips Mickey’s hand so hard it hurts, shifting in front of him slightly, and they’re only feet from the ladder of the plane, only inches from the tarmac, and if they run they might be able to make it before anybody catches them, and Ian’s turning around to tell Mickey his plan when he hears it.

It sounds like fireworks.

And Mickey smiles before he falls. 


End file.
